Purchase Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel

Helen Simonson has fashioned a wonderful novel of love triumphant in a world of conflicting values and cultures. Here, the author construes the plight of a Major Ernest Pettigrew, (ret). The Major is a recent widower, ex-Army, who lives alone in a world, temporally located in the present, (a small traditional English village) but also residing in a parallel world of the Major's--the Britain of the pre-war years. The Major is essentially a Victorian, trying to survive in the 21st Century. As the novel opens, he isn't doing too well at the job. He has one son, whom he barely understands, who is usually away making money in London and whom he rarely sees. The Major is beginning to suffer the slings and arrows of physical difficulties which start to effect us in our late 60s.

The Major's conservatism drifts onto a collision course with another culture, when he meets Jasmina Ali, a Pakistani widow, a local shopkeeper who has also lost her spouse. Jasmina's son, and her extended family are fiercely, suffocatingly, protective of Jasmina and do not wish her to marry again. The Major is attracted to Jasmina, but the village gossips do not want the Major to marry a Pakistani.

The Major also recently lost his brother and a complication arises from the fact that a matched pair of Churchill shotguns which were left to the brothers, (one each), with the proviso that if one of the brothers died, the remaining shotgun would be returned to the surviving brother. But the brother's surviving wife has different ideas. And she doesn't like Pakis.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand asks the question: In a world where people live much longer, how do the elderly deal with loneliness? Should they look for sexual love; the kind they knew when they were younger? Should they simply look for companionship? Should outsiders be allowed to interfere? The author answers this last question in a resounding, no!

This novel is wonderfully plotted--sad sometimes, but humorous at others--with a few nice twists and turns. The course of true love does not run smoothly here. But the author makes it run beautifully.Get more detail about Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel.